The US Department of Justice has hit Dutch shipping company DSD with a $2.5 million criminal fine for operating a crude oil tanker without an oily water separator.
The company was convicted of eight felonies with four crew members also charged. Three crew members have been jailed for up to six months whilst a forth who pleaded guilty is awaiting sentence.
Crews were forging the logs to hide the fact they were illegally discharging oily waste water created by the vessel.
The deception was taking place on DSD’s 56,000-ton crude oil tanker the M/T Stavanger Blossom.
A routine spot inspection by the U.S Coast Guard in November 2014 uncovered it.
The Coast Guard said the ship had discharged 20,000 gallons of oil-contaminated water in just the last two months of its operation.
Not only this but prosecutors offered a memo from back in 2010 as evidence that DSD officials were aware that ship was operating illegally from that time.
DSD will pay $500,000 of the $2.5 million fine to fund marine research in the Gulf Coast region and is on three years’ probation.
The four crew members named will have their merchant marine licenses revoked and will no longer be allowed to work on cargo vessels in the future.
